Top 10 Productive Things Graphic Designers Can do With Downtime

As a freelance graphic designer, there’s a high chance that you’ll experience downtime at one time or another. This, although scary, is a natural part of freelancing, and something that can’t really be avoided.

In fact, you’ll be lucky to find a graphic designer, or any other freelancer for that matter, who doesn’t experience some form of downtime. Because we’ll all have to deal with downtime, it’s important you know the productive things you can be getting up to when you have no paid projects on the go.

In this article, we’ll be looking at the top ten things that freelance graphic designers can do during their downtime, including working on personal projects, emailing previous clients, and much more.

Keep reading to learn more!

Update Your Graphic Design Blog

No graphic design portfolio is complete without a blog! However, as you probably know, finding time to keep your blog updated when you’re dealing with any number of client projects can be a huge struggle.

Because of this, it’s important you’re giving your blog some attention during your downtime!

But, why should you have a blog? Well, there are a few reasons.

The first is that writing about design allows you to showcase your expertise to potential clients. Clients want to see that you know what you’re talking about, so a blog is an excellent way of sharing your knowledge with a wider audience.

And second, SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and is essentially optimising your website content to rank higher in search engines like Google and Bing. By regularly talking about graphic design, there’s a chance that more potential clients will be shown your website when looking for freelancers to hire.

If you want to start a blog, but don’t know where to start, my simple,  seven-step framework for creating blog content will help you get up and running!

Write for Other Blogs

A huge part of getting traffic to your portfolio is link building, which means getting links to your website spread far and wide.

You can do this by growing an audience on social media and posting links to your portfolio, which can be done by sharing your work on Reddit, Dribble or Behance, or you can do it by writing for other blogs.

For me, my portfolio is a big source of client enquiries, so I make writing one article a week a priority. However, writing guest blogs are reserved for when I have downtime.

Additionally, writing content for other blogs and websites gets me seen by more people, which can help me reach a new audience who may potentially be interested in working on a project together.

Create and Sell Templates

On social media, you can’t move for those “finance gurus” who constantly tell us to build up streams of passive income. The thing is, no matter how annoying those people are, they’re right about this particular thing.

Building a passive income as a designer can help you deal with the downtime we’re talking about. So when you find yourself with some extra time between projects, consider creating a range of purchasable templates that others can download.

ThemeForest from Envato Elements can be a good place to start if you have experience building WordPress, Shopify or social media templates. Back in the day, I used to make a decent bit of extra income creating Tumblr themes, until it got nuked.

It’s a lot of work, but if you’re consistent, it can pay off. At the very least, it’s good practice.

Create and Sell Design Products

The huge surge in popularity we’ve seen in tools like Canva shows that even non-designers want to create cool things for their projects. This means there’s a market to sell digital design products, and something for you to do during your downtime.

There’s really no limit to what you can create and sell, but if you’re looking for some inspiration: icon packs, UI sets, illustrations, fonts, and PSD files are all good places to start.

Create Online Courses

You, as a graphic designer, obviously know a lot about graphic design. Additionally, you have your own unique experience within this industry. When you combine both of those together, you have valuable knowledge and advice that other designers will find helpful.

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you’ll already know that I have some digital courses available on my Gumroad. This is a way of sharing my knowledge with other designers, whilst also helping me develop my writing and layout skills during downtime.

Creating online courses can be a great way of earning some extra income, as well as positioning yourself as an expert within your field.

Follow Up With Previous Clients

If you find yourself without an ongoing project, contacting previous clients you’ve worked with can be an easy way to pick up some extra work.

They may not need anything, but on the other hand, they may need a change to their website, a new business card design, a poster made, or anything else. The reality is, you never know until you ask.

At the very least, checking in with previous clients is a good way of building and maintaining professional relationships, keeping you front of mind when they do need design services

Reach Out for Testimonials

We all know that testimonials provide that all-important social proof that’s often the make or break of clients deciding to work with us.

If you’ve worked on a project that was particularly successful, or built a good working relationship with a client, reaching out to get written testimonials is an excellent use of downtime. Not only does checking in help to maintain the relationship (as mentioned above), testimonials will help convince new clients to work with you on their next project.

Learn and Develop Your Skills

Downtime doesn’t have to be a time when you’re being productive. If you find yourself with some spare time, dedicating that to honing your craft is time well spent.

Simply learning a new Photoshop technique, practising your logo sketches, or keeping yourself up to date with the latest design trends is an excellent way of spending your downtime.

And to level up your productivity, you can’t go wrong with my digital course here!

Update Your Portfolio

As designers, well all know that it’s all too easy to neglect our portfolios when we’re busy working on projects. But, the reality is that it's our portfolios that help us pick up clients, which means we need to make sure they’re up-to-date and exciting.

During your downtime, spend a few hours adding new work to your portfolio, updating any relevant “About me” information, and, most importantly, writing case studies to show how you work.

Enjoy Your Time Off

I’ve written a lot here about productive things you should be doing with your downtime, but one of the most important things is this: enjoy your time off.

Working in design, you know how manic things can be. Juggling multiple projects, dealing with emails and meetings, and handling any number of ad hoc requests can cause us to burn out pretty fast.

That’s why, when you find yourself with downtime, don’t beat yourself up if you’re not using it to be super productive. Make sure to allocate some time to relax, unwind, and recharge.

Conclusion

Downtime, luckily, only happens every now and then, at least for most of us. But, when it does happen, we can’t help but feel downhearted that we’re not working on anything.

However, by reframing it as a time to focus on some other aspects of our freelance business, downtime can be a hugely valuable thing.

During downtime, you can look at collecting testimonials, generating extra income, developing your skills, and much more!

So next time you find yourself with some downtime, don’t fret! Don’t look at it as a time when you’re not making money, but rather a time when you can direct your energy to work on other areas of your freelance business that often get neglected.

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